The Intersection of Innovation and Contemporary Living

Subscriber growth suddenly stops for cable TV industry

Worst quarterly performance to date… technology plays a minor role, the economy appears to be the main drag on cable tv subscriptions. Maybe it’s time for Comcast et. al. to do something different and actually lower prices… btw, this certainly doesn’t reflect positively on the high carriage fees that cable tv operators have been agreeing to in order to secure retransmission consent agreements from content providers in recent years.

The number of cable subscribers dropped by 711,000, according to SNL Kagan, with six out of eight cable providers reporting their worst quarterly subscriber losses to date. Other parts of the industry were able to add just enough subscribers to make the net loss more like 216,000. Cable’s share of the pay-TV market dropped slightly too, from 63.6 percent to just 61 percent during the quarter.